E-Mentoring in Physical Education

Mentoring can be a critical component of teachers' professional development and retention, yet logistical and fiscal challenges often limit the amount of contact a protégé can have with a mentor teacher. This investigation explored a school district initiative to address this need for more mentor interaction by supplementing traditional face-to-face mentoring with electronic mentoring. Thirty elementary physical education teachers participated in a year-long program that involved workshops, school visits, videotaped lessons, and electronic mentoring via chat rooms. Data were collected from chat room postings and analyzed for frequency of response and quality. In addition, a series of interviews were analyzed via constant comparison process to further understand teachers' perceptions of electronic mentoring. In general, teacher postings were minimal in frequency and quality. The limited use of the chat rooms was likely linked to the teachers' perceptions of electronic mentoring, which included several concerns with the technical and human dimensions of the process.     

Expediting the Institutional Review Board Process for Exercise Protocols

Abstract

The investigation was conducted to determine the relative effectiveness of three different approaches to health instruction at the college level. Each of three groups of students was taught by one instructional approach: problem solving, lecture, or discussion. Analysis of initial and final measurements of health knowledge, health attitudes, and health interests through the covariance technique and t tests indicated that all three approaches were equally effective in the achievement of instructional outcomes.     

Development of a Meiosis Concept Inventory

We have designed, developed, and validated a 17-question Meiosis Concept Inventory (Meiosis CI) to diagnose student misconceptions on meiosis, which is a fundamental concept in genetics. We targeted large introductory biology and genetics courses and used published methodology for question development, which included the validation of questions by student interviews (n = 28), in-class testing of the questions by students (n = 193), and expert (n = 8) consensus on the correct answers. Our item analysis showed that the questions’ difficulty and discrimination indices were in agreement with published recommended standards and discriminated effectively between high- and low-scoring students. We foresee other institutions using the Meiosis CI as both a diagnostic tool and an instrument to assess teaching effectiveness and student progress, and invite instructors to visit http://q4b.biology.ubc.ca for more information.     

Do Off-Campus Students Use E-Books?

ABSTRACT

The number of electronic books (e-books) that are available is increasing rapidly. Libraries are acquiring them individually, in large groups, and as part of collections. Off-campus librarians perceive them to be the best solution to the problems and expenses related to loaning and shipping print books to off-campus students. This study looks at the usage of e-books by off-campus students at Central Michigan University (CMU) to see if usage patterns can assist librarians with e-book collection development to support off-campus programs.     

Academic Journal Publishing

This paper summarizes the presentations made at the “Academic Journal Publishing” session of the 2007 NASIG conference. The session was conducted by four publishers from a variety of academic publishing companies who made presentations (specifically tailored to a librarian audience) which provided a broad stroke overview of their industry and how they go about the process of publishing and distributing academic journals in the 21st century. Through each of their presentations they spoke to the questions of “what they do, how they do it, and why they do it.” Topics covered included the launch and acquisition of journals, the peer review process, the tools and services supplied to authors and editors, the production processes employed, special legal and copyright issues, marketing and distribution strategies, and usage.     

Perceived organizational effectiveness,job satisfaction,culture, and communication: Challenging the traditional view

This study challenges the traditional view that organizational culture, relationships, and communication activities precede or produce the outcomes of job satisfaction and perceived organizational effectiveness. Specifically, the study (a) empirically examines job satisfaction and perceived effectiveness for their potential as important explanatory processes for the outcomes of organizational culture, relationships, and information receiving and sending, and (b) empirically compares the traditional model with the competing conceptualization. Results of a canonical correlation analysis utilizing 2245 individuals in 21 organizations in various parts of the world indicate that 54.8% of the variance in perceptions of culture, relationships, information receiving, and information sending can be explained by job satisfaction and perceived organizational effectiveness. Results of a nested model comparison of the two models using latent variable path analysis demonstrated that the competing conceptualization is a significantly better fit to the data than the traditional view.     

Academic Achievement and Perceptions of the Learning Environment in Virtual and Traditional Secondary Mathematics Classrooms

This study identified pre-entry variables related to course completion and noncompletion in university online distance education courses. Four hundred and sixty-four students who were enrolled in online distance education courses participated in the study. Discriminant analysis revealed six pre-entry variables were related to retention, including cumulative grade point average, class rank, number of previous courses completed online, searching the Internet training, operating systems and file management training, and Internet applications training. Results indicate prior educational experience and prior computer training may help distinguish between individuals who complete university online distance education courses and those who do not.     

The Influence of Secondary and Junior Schools on Sixteen Year Examination Performance: A Cross‐classified Multilevel Analysis∗

This paper presents a model for the explanation of examination (GCSE) performance at the age of 16 years in terms of both secondary and junior school attended together with prior achievement measures and certain background factors. Using a cohort of 758 students in 48 junior schools and 116 secondary schools it compares the variation in performance due to secondary schools with that due to junior schools in a multilevel cross‐classified analysis. It shows that the variation among junior schools is substantially larger than that among secondary schools. It also demonstrates that those junior schools with high average achievement scores for the students when they leave junior school also tend to have high average scores for their students at the age of 16. The implications of these findings, if replicated, are profound. They imply that current attempts to measure the ‘effectiveness’ of secondary schools using achievement measured at the start of secondary schooling may be fruitless and they point to the need for school effectiveness research to become involved in very long term studies of schooling, rather than being restricted to a single phase.

     

The View From Down Under: Practical Guides for Effective Schooling

This paper examines the relationship of the policies and practices employed by 3 high school reform models – Early College High Schools, Redesigned High Schools, and High Schools That Work – with student success in college preparatory mathematics courses by the end of the 10th grade. Data on policies and practices collected through a survey of school principals in North Carolina are combined with administrative data on student course-taking and performance. The examined policies include course-taking requirements, rigorous instruction, academic support, personalization, and relevance. Results show that implementation of these policies varies across models and that higher levels of implementation of combinations of these policies are associated with improved outcomes.     

The effect of class size on the teaching of pupils aged 7 – 11 years

There is still little consensus on whether and how teaching is affected by small and large classes, especially in the case of students in the later primary years. This study investigated effects of class size on teaching of pupils aged 7 – 11 years. We used a multimethod approach, integrating qualitative information from teachers' end-of-year accounts and data from case studies with quantitative information from systematic observations. Results showed that there was more individual attention in smaller classes, a more active role for pupils, and beneficial effects on the quality of teaching. It is suggested that teachers in both large and small classes need to develop strategies for more individual attention but also recognize the benefits of other forms of learning, for example, group work.